A sharpened quill (the shaft of a feather) was the standard writing instrument for over thousand years before the fountain pen was invented in 1884. Then in the 1930s Ladislao Biro, a Hungarian artist and a journalist, invented the ballpoint pen in Budapest. He fled when the second world war broke out, eventually reaching Argentina.
While the help of his brother Georg, a chemist, he perfected the pen and manufactured the pen it in Buenos Aires during the war. In 1944 he sold his interests in the intention to one of his backers who produced the Biro pen for the Allied air forces, because it was not affected by changes in air pressure, Ladislao Biro disappeared into obscurity, although his name became a household word throughout the world.
Picture Credit : Google